[[!meta date="2019-06-05T22:14:34.896035"]]
[[!meta author="Tyler Cipriani"]]
[[!meta copyright="""
Copyright &copy; 2019 Tyler Cipriani
"""]]
[[!meta title="Reese the Cat"]]

![Reese the Cat (Jan 2018)](https://photos.tylercipriani.com/thumbs/95/042d33e4ac03c3a15b40436f20c078/large.jpg "35mm f/1.4 2018-01-09 22:06:10")

My good friend Reese the Cat died on the last day of May 2019. She was 13 years
old -- still a young cat, by cat standards. She had a tumor on her tongue and
couldn't swallow and couldn't eat or drink. We took her to a vet clinic within
walking distance of our house on a sunny Friday morning to have her put to
sleep -- there were few options remaining for us and this seemed like the right
one. We stayed with her the whole time.

I've worked from home for about 4.5 years now. I've spent much of that time
alone in my home office -- furiously hammering at my keyboard and sighing
loudly. Reese the Cat has been there, too. Walking across my desk; threatening
to take down production servers by flopping down on my keyboard to get my
attention.

She spent much of her time alerting me of the activity of various animals she
tracked outside our house. This meant running from the window in my office to
the laundry room upstairs to get a wider view of the neighborhood cats, birds,
and squirrels in the backyard. I've since made the assertion that there seem to
be fewer cats wandering around the neighborhood, but that's probably not true.

![A blurry Reese sitting in my office chair (Sep 2016)](https://photos.tylercipriani.com/thumbs/41/978f71184905da00b1e04ec1444877/large.jpg "24mm f/8 2016-09-22 15:25:35")

Whenever I closed a door in the house Reese took exception. She'd sit outside
the door caterwauling, scratching at the carpet, generally making herself a
nuisance. She often made a point of darting through doors as soon as they were
opened -- without regard for why a door had been shut or what may be on the
other side. I've come to expect Reese to be behind doors. The past few days I
keep opening doors expecting her to be there.

![Reese (Jul 2017)](https://photos.tylercipriani.com/thumbs/21/4c234edbc4e3ca24fbe29b288d52dc/large.jpg "35mm f/8 2017-07-09 12:29:58")

I call her, "Reese the Cat" as that's her _proper_ name. When we first moved to
Colorado we lived in an apartment building and one of our neighbors was a woman
named "Reese". One day Blazey casually mentioned that Reese had been in the
closet all day. I was confused. Are there locks on the closet?  Did she not
have a phone? She lived with her partner: where was he during all of this? We
realized we needed to disambiguate: Reese the Cat and Reese the Person. It
started as a subtle joke, and then it became her name. When I talked to her (as
I frequently did when working from home) I called her "Reese the Cat"
and often addressed her by her longer title: "My good friend Reese the Cat".

![Me & Reese playing (Jun 2013)](https://photos.tylercipriani.com/thumbs/48/91df119ca3064e966f31810f3f00a7/large.jpg "Me & Reese playing a game that made her crazy and excited (2013-06-15 12:40:47)")

I wrote most of the above on the 5th of June. Now it's the 14th of October and
I still haven't actually published it. I have excuses: I wanted to amalgamate
some photos; I wanted to re-read after some time had passed; overall, this
post was just too sad to complete.

![Reese on a bench (May 2017)](https://photos.tylercipriani.com/thumbs/b4/4b3056531cba0e1bd722ed14adf055/large.jpg "14mm photo of Reese taken 2017-05-08 08:47:35")

It's been a while. We've given her expensive, uneaten food to the humane
society. I've stopped expecting to see her around the house. I still miss
Reese.

